3D Studio Max animation

When i start making a game i start with a basic concept. Right now i'm thinking on a game whose idea came from a simple flag. Meanwhile i made the flag in 3D Studio Max. I'll have to improve the animation for its purpose, but i couldn't help it just to start playing with the 3D, so here is the 1143 portuguese flag (you may guess the game will have something to do with history)

3D for a magazine

So, after learning something in 3D Studio Max i had to make a magazine with Adobe InDesign as a project for college. The most interesting part, for me, was that this magazine had to have a 3D object on the cover, so i made the 3D has you can see in the image above. I've inserted 3 white lines on the image for copyright protection. The letters are easy to make, but the hand took some time and for my secound 3D creation i can just say i that, in the end, i was proud of the overall work.

My First 3D

College is greate. There's a lot of things to learn. From the first time i saw a 3d artwork that i want to learn 3d. That doesn't mean i'm quitting programming, no,... no way, programming is a passion beyond any other, in terms of professional life. But, i have to confess that i have a crush on 3d. So this semester i learned 3D Studio Max and Maya on college. I can just say that is absolutly beautifull. For the first time you open a software like 3D Studio Max or Maya, its intimidating because you don't know where to start. A lot of things, like icons, menu options, whatever on screen that just make you think "what do i have in front of my eyes?" and "What do i do with this?". Ok, so drawing some objects may be easy for a newbye but transforming those objects is not that intuitive. So learning to operate these tools was a great deal for me.

After reading some books i came with something, in 3D Studio Max 2009, like the image you can see here. It's an easy thing to do, but it's a start.

I Allways knew that i wanted to be a programmer, and what i wanted to do exactly on my professional life as a programmer. I wanted to work on medicine and to make computer games. Those where the two areas of my interest. Why? Well, computer games are a passion. I guess i don't have to say much about this. For you, when reading this, you can understand that video games are very interesting. Interesting for some, a passion for others. I've been since kid playing them and thinking what i could do to change the game if i were able to do it. Medicine, well,... i've been seing a lot of people suffering because of health problem, unfortunatly, who hasn't? that gives me strenght to want to make something in that area. Fortunatly, i've found a job, has a programmer, that allows me to work on medicine. Of course that working is not charity. We are stuck to making business, or else we won't make money, the company goes down, and we with it. That's why things move so slow on healthcare, but we can't do things other way. This is the painfull truth, and as much as we don't like, we have to accept it, it's common logic. The world isn't so difficult to understand, we just have to follow the stream. But, hey,... i'm very happy to work on healthcare. I'm not programming the next machine that will kill cancer or make people imune to diseases, but i'm creating healthcare applications. Games? no, i did not forget about games. Actually, when i went to college, i my game programming "wanna be" came to top. I was trying to came up with a team, and i needed two more members to join with me to go two a competition, i guess it was in corea. I had an idea for a web site, that i didn't knew if it wasn't going to win, but i was certain it would reach corea, so I needed another .Net programmer, like me, and a good designer. I thought of some guys in my class. One was a good designer and the other a crazy lad allways trying to make computer games. That was it, computer games,... and this is where i consider to be the "Part II" of my "programmer's life". Rejecting, both of my colleagues, the idea to to fly to Corea and participate on the competition, i knew i had no time or chance to participate alone. So i gave up that idea. But,... my crazy colleague with likes for game programming, taught me some things about this world. Some of the "game engines" we could buy, some of the programming languages that where most used,... and "Voilá", i loved it. Once again, like before when i tried to learn computer programming on Commodore 64, this person just disappeared. He left college. So, i tried to do my own searches. For some reason i believe in destiny. Things happen, people talk, you gain knowledge and that knowledge will be usefull for your future? If you've read my previous post, you know i started programming because of a friend of mine that after some time left town. Now, has you can see, i started looking, again, at game programming, because a colleague of mine taught me some things and after that he left school. Is it destiny? honestly, i believe so!!!

So here i am now, 3 years later, looking at some code in AS3, on a game i'm developing and that i hope to sell!!! I already have a game developed, "Iclick". It was my first game in AS3. We have to start somewhere and that was my starting point. Judge me if you like,... too few levels, maybe there more things to work on the game, well, yes, but it was my first game, and i wanted to keep it simple. I wanted to know if i was able to do it and post it. I was, Lets now do some "Kung Fu". Just like before (if you read my previous post).

The Internet brought us a lot of new things, specially about the way people comunicate with each others. Although my idea of Internet is not the one we all have nowadays (something more like secoundlife, but more connected to making business), i have to accept the idea that bloggs help people to know more about people with which we are related, somehow, professionaly or with other interest on the personal life. That is good, in my opinion,... its an experience that we can use in the future,...

So, that might be the best reason for me to create this blog - Sharing. Of course i'm not interested on sharing everything, but, i'm interested to share my professional life. Why? well, because in my personal life i've been looking for chances, although knowing exactly what i want, its more difficult to reach the objective. You are lucky, or you aren't. If you are, then you must grab the change when it's time, but you are not lucky, well, there's no change you can grab the chance, because there will be none. Professionaly, you can keep trying. Everything resumes to chances, of couse, or as i keep saying to myself, the will of God. You can't keep away from His will, but you can try doing your best to be what you want to be, and be the best to do it. That takes time, money, patient, and most of all WILL, which, in my opinion is the keyword.

From the first day that i saw a computer i just said "WOW", but when i saw a videogame running on that computer, and i remember the day, i sayd, "amazing, i love this,... how can i make videogames?". Back then, here, in Portugal, there wasn't a lot of documentation on programming languages. I guess the books wouldn't sell on the book stores. A friend of mine, that had programming in school, taught me a little about programming on commodore 64. I was amazed with what was possible to do. I was able to buy 3 books on "basic programming", i have them today. Computers evolved,... On the following years i was always trying to know more about programming, but there were no books to buy or anyone else to talk to, once my friend went to live to another place. Some time after,... a long time after i say a "C programming" book on a store. Useless to say that i bought it. Then a problem came. What do i do with this? I have the book, i have the knowledge, but where do i program? back them i did not knew what a compiler was or a linker, or what ever. After i got that information, the problem came to be "how do i get the compiler?". No one had ever heard about that.

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Can't know the exact year. Was it 1996? Don't know exactly, but i got my first Visual Basic 4 Compiler. Great!!! happiness. And what about my first book on Visual Basic? on sale? "OH YEAH". I was able to make "Kung Fu". I had all that i takes to do it. That was when i knew what i wanted to be for the rest of my life: "PROGRAMMER". I was able to do it.

In the following years, programming books started to sell on book stores, i got my first visual studio 6 package and i was able to program in all those languages. When i started working, i started taking programming courses on those languages in Visual Studio. To this day, i haven't stopped doing it,... i just love it. Take control of the machine, tell it what to do, and be very happy when it does what i tell it what to do, after fighting hard and telling me that its crashing because this and that. It's like conquering the world, but in this case, conquering the machine. that is fighting against us. Of course that after all these years more challenges came, and conquering the machine is just not enought. We must conquer even our own knowledge,... Mathematics, phisics, calculus, whatever comes in our way.

So, this was the begginning,... the start of it all,...